Hi! Altering refill recipes

[TheShrike]

Hi everyone! New home brewer and new dad here. I got a brew demon kit for Christmas and have been having fun with it.

I've been playing with the brew demon 2gal refill kits and really enjoying it. With the baby I don't have a lot of time for research and experimentation. I've noticed most of the kits have pretty low abv but the Cranberry Maibock recipe packs a good punch at 9%. If you're familiar with the recipe it's just 2 premixes: a can of the golden ale mix, and a can of American ale mix, along with 5g and 2g yeast packets. The you add canned cranberries and marmalade and I'm guessing that with the extra yeast kicks up the abv. My question is; can I swap out the canned cranberries and marmalade for a different canned fruit and different jam to get a similar abv beer with a different flavor profile? Are there any easy ways to kick up the abv in other recipes?

[FrozenInTime]

Welcome to the forum!
More yeast, less yeast, will not affect ABV. More yeast only raises the population higher to handle more sugar. Yes, the yeast do phart alcohol, but they only do so after eating the sugars from the fruit LME/DME in the batch. Sugar is what controls ABV. The more sugar, the more alky-haul pharted. I'm not going to get technical, there are experts here that will be glad to make your head spin... LOL You'll be fine using just the supplied packets of yeast for each kit they have. The yeast will multiply to the level it needs to be. Too much yeast can cause problems, but you pretty much have to intentionally add too much. You can add more fermentable sugar and some yeast to kick up ABV on almost any kit but I highly suggest just go with the flow on the kits until you get the hang of it and get time to read-read-read, it's easy to eff up a batch trying to chase the dragon (ABV). IMHO

[TheShrike]

Thanks FrozenInTime, the increased abv was just my secondary question. What do you think about swapping out the canned cranberry and marmalade on that CranMaibock recipe to experiment with different flavors? Will it still lack that same 9% punch if I swap out the fruit ingredients?

[FrozenInTime]

Should not be a problem swapping out. Different brands, different fruits, etc will have different amounts of sugars. Only problem I can see is picking up a can of something else and it having lots more sugar than the recipe was calculated for. Adding too much sugar to a batch can make it taste bad. I've done orange, blue-berries, black-berries and they came out. The flavor... ehhh, did not do them again. It has been a long time since I've done batches from scratch, I mostly follow my old recipes now, they make me happy.... LOL
I'm thinking if you want to get more into it, designing your own variations, start looking for recipes that will start you steeping grains to go with the canned LME. Steeping is done on a stove-top in a pot.

[TheShrike]

Thanks again for the advice. I picked up a pdf of a brewers guilde I can't recall the name but I saw it recommended here on some old threads. I'll probably give that a read and start to get my feet wet.